Computer Networks and the Internet

Transcription

1 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page 1 Chapter 1 Computer Networks and the Internet Computer networking is one of the most exciting and important technological fields of our time. The Internet interconnects millions (and soon billions) of computers, providing a global communication, storage, and computation infrastructure. Moreover, the Internet is currently being integrated with mobile and wireless technology, ushering in an impressive array of new applications. Yes, computer networking has indeed come a long way since its infancy in the 1960s. But this is only the beginning a new generation of creative engineers and computer scientists will drive the Internet to yet unforeseen terrains. This book will provide today s students with the vehicles they need to journey to and explore the new lands in this exciting field. This first chapter presents an overview of computer networking and the Internet. Our goal here is to paint a broad-brush picture of computer networking, to see the forest through the trees. We ll cover a lot of ground in this introductory chapter and discuss a lot of pieces of a computer network, while not losing sight of the big picture. The chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of the book. It can also be used for a mini-course on computer networking. In this chapter, after introducing some basic terminology and concepts, we will first examine the edge of a computer network. We ll look at the end systems and network applications, and the transport services provided to these applications. We ll then explore the core of a computer network, examining the links and the switches that transport data, as well as the access networks and physical media that 1

2 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page 2 2 CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet connect end systems to the network core. We ll learn that the Internet is a network of networks, and we ll learn about how these networks connect with each other. After having completed this overview of the edge and core of a computer network, we ll take a broader view. We ll examine the causes of data-transfer delay and loss in a computer network, and provide simple quantitative models for end-toend delay, models that take into account transmission, propagation, and queuing delays. We ll then introduce some of the key architectural principles in computer networking, namely, protocol layering and service models. Finally, we ll close this chapter with a brief history of computer networking. 1.1 What Is the Internet? In this book we use the public Internet, a specific computer network, as our principal vehicle for discussing computer network protocols. But what is the Internet? We would like to be able to give you a one-sentence definition of the Internet, a definition that you can take home and share with your family and friends. Alas, the Internet is very complex, both in terms of its hardware and software components, as well as in the services it provides A Nuts-and-Bolts Description Instead of giving a one-sentence definition, let s try a more descriptive approach. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to describe the nuts and bolts of the Internet, that is, the basic hardware and software components that make up the Internet. Another way is to describe the Internet in terms of a networking infrastructure that provides services to distributed applications. Let s begin with the nuts-andbolts description, using Figure 1.1 to illustrate our discussion. The public Internet is a worldwide computer network, that is, a network that interconnects millions of computing devices throughout the world. Most of these computing devices are traditional desktop PCs, UNIX-based workstations, and so-called servers that store and transmit information such as Web pages and messages. Increasingly, nontraditional Internet end systems such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), TVs, mobile computers, automobiles, and toasters are being connected to the Internet. (Toasters [Toasty 2002] are not the only rather unusual devices to have been hooked up to the Internet; see Internet Home Appliances [Appliance 2002].) In the Internet jargon, all of these devices are called hosts or end systems. As of January 2002 there were million end systems using the Internet; and this number continues to grow exponentially [ISC 2002]. End systems are connected together by communication links. We ll see in Section 1.4 that there are many types of communication links, which are made up of different types of physical media, including coaxial cable, copper wire, fiber optics,

3 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page What Is the Internet? 3 Regional ISP Local ISP Company Network Key: Host (or end system) Server Mobile Router Modem Base station Satellite link Figure 1.1 Some pieces of the Internet and radio spectrum. Different links can transmit data at different rates. The link transmission rate is often called the bandwidth of the link, which is typically measured in bits/second. End systems are not usually directly attached to each other via a single communication link. Instead, they are indirectly connected to each other through intermediate switching devices known as routers. A router takes a chunk of information arriving on one of its incoming communication links and forwards that chunk of

4 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page 4 4 CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet information on one of its outgoing communication links. In the jargon of computer networking, the chunk of information is called a packet. The path that the packet takes from the sending end system, through a series of communication links and routers, to the receiving end system is known as a route or path through the network. Rather than provide a dedicated path between communicating end systems, the Internet uses a technique known as packet switching that allows multiple communicating end systems to share a path, or parts of a path, at the same time. The first packet-switched networks, created in the 1970s, are the earliest ancestors of today s Internet. End systems access the Internet through Internet Service Providers (ISPs),including residential ISPs such as AOL or MSN, university ISPs such as Stanford University, and corporate ISPs such as Ford Motor Company. Each ISP is a network of routers and communication links. The different ISPs provide a variety of different types of network access to the end systems, including 56 Kbps dial-up modem access, residential broadband access such as cable modem or DSL, high-speed LAN access, and wireless access. ISPs also provide Internet access to content providers, connecting Web sites directly to the Internet. To allow communication among Internet users and to allow users to access worldwide Internet content, these lower-tier ISPs are interconnected through national and international upper-tier ISPs, such as the UUNet and Sprint. An upper-tier ISP consists of high-speed routers interconnected with high-speed fiber-optic links. Each ISP network, whether upper-tier or lower-tier, is managed independently, runs the IP protocol (see below), and conforms to certain naming and address conventions. We will examine ISPs and their interconnection more closely in Section 1.5. End systems, routers, and other pieces of the Internet, run protocols that control the sending and receiving of information within the Internet. TCP (the Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (the Internet Protocol) are two of the most important protocols in the Internet. The IP protocol specifies the format of the packets that are sent and received among routers and end systems. The Internet s principal protocols are collectively known as TCP/IP. We begin looking into protocols in this introductory chapter. But that s just a start much of this book is concerned with computer network protocols! The public Internet (that is, the global network of networks discussed above) is the network that one typically refers to as the Internet. There are also many private networks, such as many corporate and government networks, whose hosts cannot exchange messages with hosts outside of the private network (unless the messages pass through so-called firewalls, which restrict the flow of messages to and from the network). These private networks are often referred to as intranets, as they use the same types of hosts, routers, links, and protocols as the public Internet. At the technical and developmental level, the Internet is made possible through creation, testing, and implementation of Internet standards. These standards are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)[IETF 2002]. The IETF standards documents are called RFCs (request for comments). RFCs started out as general requests for comments (hence the name) to resolve architecture problems

5 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page What Is the Internet? 5 that faced the precursor to the Internet. RFCs, though not formally standards, have evolved to the point where they are cited as such. RFCs tend to be quite technical and detailed. They define protocols such as TCP, IP, HTTP (for the Web), and SMTP (for open-standards ). There are more than 3,000 different RFCs A Service Description The preceding discussion has identified many of the pieces that make up the Internet. Let s now leave the nuts-and-bolts description and take a service-oriented view. The Internet allows distributed applications running on its end systems to exchange data with each other. These applications include remote login, electronic mail, Web surfing, instant messaging, audio and video streaming, Internet telephony, distributed games, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, and much, much more. It is worth emphasizing that the Web is not a separate network but rather just one of many distributed applications that use the communication services provided by the Internet. The Internet provides two services to its distributed applications: a connectionoriented reliable service and a connectionless unreliable service. Loosely speaking, the connection-oriented reliable service guarantees that data transmitted from a sender to a receiver will eventually be delivered to the receiver in order and in its entirety. The connectionless unreliable service does not make any guarantees about eventual delivery. Typically, a distributed application makes use of one or the other (but not both) of these two services. Currently, the Internet does not provide a service that makes promises about how long it will take to deliver the data from sender to receiver. And except for increasing your access bandwidth to your Internet service provider, you currently cannot obtain better service (for example, bounded delays) by paying more a state of affairs that some (particularly Americans!) find odd. We ll take a look at state-ofthe-art Internet research that is aimed at changing this situation in Chapter 6. This second description of the Internet that is, in terms of the services it provides to distributed applications is a nontraditional, but important, one. Increasingly, advances in the nuts-and-bolts components of the Internet are being driven by the needs of new applications. So it s important to keep in mind that the Internet is an infrastructure in which new applications are being constantly invented and deployed. We have just given two descriptions of the Internet, one in terms of its hardware and software components, the other in terms of the services it provides to distributed applications. But perhaps you are still confused as to what the Internet is. What are packet switching, TCP/IP, and connection-oriented service? What are routers? What kinds of communication links are present in the Internet? What is a distributed application? If you feel a bit overwhelmed by all of this now, don t worry the

6 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page 6 Got the time? 6 CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet purpose of this book is to introduce you to both the nuts and bolts of the Internet, as well as the principles that govern how and why it works. We will explain these important terms and questions in the subsequent sections and chapters What Is a Protocol? Now that we ve got a bit of a feel for what the Internet is, let s consider another important buzzword in computer networking: protocol. What is a protocol? What does a protocol do? How would you recognize a protocol if you met one? A Human Analogy It is probably easiest to understand the notion of a computer network protocol by first considering some human analogies, since we humans execute protocols all of the time. Consider what you do when you want to ask someone for the time of day. A typical exchange is shown in Figure 1.2. Human protocol (or good manners, at least) Hi TCP connection request Hi TCP connection reply GET 2:00 <file> Time Time Time Time Figure 1.2 A human protocol and a computer network protocol

7 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page What Is the Internet? 7 dictates that one first offer a greeting (the first Hi in Figure 1.2) to initiate communication with someone else. The typical response to a Hi is a returned Hi message. Implicitly, one then takes a cordial Hi response as an indication that one can proceed and ask for the time of day. A different response to the initial Hi (such as Don t bother me! or I don t speak English, or some unprintable reply) might indicate an unwillingness or inability to communicate. In this case, the human protocol would be not to ask for the time of day. Sometimes one gets no response at all to a question, in which case one typically gives up asking that person for the time. Note that in our human protocol, there are specific messages we send, and specific actions we take in response to the received reply messages or other events (such as no reply within some given amount of time). Clearly, transmitted and received messages, and actions taken when these messages are sent or received or other events occur, play a central role in a human protocol. If people run different protocols (for example, if one person has manners but the other does not, or if one understands the concept of time and the other does not) the protocols do not interoperate and no useful work can be accomplished. The same is true in networking it takes two (or more) communicating entities running the same protocol in order to accomplish a task. Let s consider a second human analogy. Suppose you re in a college class (a computer networking class, for example!). The teacher is droning on about protocols and you re confused. The teacher stops to ask, Are there any questions? (a message that is transmitted to, and received by, all students who are not sleeping). You raise your hand (transmitting an implicit message to the teacher). Your teacher acknowledges you with a smile, saying Yes... (a transmitted message encouraging you to ask your question teachers love to be asked questions), and you then ask your question (that is, transmit your message to your teacher). Your teacher hears your question (receives your question message) and answers (transmits a reply to you). Once again, we see that the transmission and receipt of messages, and a set of conventional actions taken when these messages are sent and received, are at the heart of this question-and-answer protocol. Network Protocols A network protocol is similar to a human protocol, except that the entities exchanging messages and taking actions are hardware or software components of some device (for example, computer, router, or other network-capable device). All activity in the Internet that involves two or more communicating remote entities is governed by a protocol. For example, protocols in routers determine a packet s path from source to destination; hardware-implemented protocols in the network interface cards of two physically connected computers control the flow of bits on the wire between the two network interface cards; congestion-control protocols in end systems control the rate at which packets are transmitted between sender and receiver. Protocols are running everywhere in the Internet, and consequently much of this book is about computer network protocols.

8 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page 8 8 CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet As an example of a computer network protocol with which you are probably familiar, consider what happens when you make a request to a Web server, that is, when you type in the URL of a Web page into your Web browser. The scenario is illustrated in the right half of Figure 1.2. First, your computer will send a connection request message to the Web server and wait for a reply. The Web server will eventually receive your connection request message and return a connection reply message. Knowing that it is now OK to request the Web document, your computer then sends the name of the Web page it wants to fetch from that Web server in a GET message. Finally, the Web server returns the Web page (file) to your computer. Given the human and networking examples above, the exchange of messages and the actions taken when these messages are sent and received are the key defining elements of a protocol: A protocol defines the format and the order of messages exchanged between two or more communicating entities, as well as the actions taken on the transmission and/or receipt of a message or other event. The Internet, and computer networks in general, make extensive use of protocols. Different protocols are used to accomplish different communication tasks. As you read through this book, you will learn that some protocols are simple and straightforward, while others are complex and intellectually deep. Mastering the field of computer networking is equivalent to understanding the what, why, and how of networking protocols Some Good Hyperlinks As every Internet researcher knows, some of the best and most accurate information about the Internet and its protocols is not in hard-copy books, journals, or magazines. Some of the best stuff about the Internet is in the Internet itself! Of course, there s really too much material to sift through, and sometimes the gems are few and far between. Below, we list a few generally excellent Web sites for network- and Internet-related material. Throughout the book, we will also present links to relevant, high-quality URLs that provide background, original, or advanced material related to the particular topic under study. Here is a set of key links that you may want to consult as you proceed through this book: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), The IETF is an open international community concerned with the development and operation of the Internet and its architecture. The IETF was formally established by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), in The IETF meets three times a year; much of its ongoing work is conducted via mailing lists by working groups. The IETF is administered by the Internet Society, whose Web site contains lots of high-quality, Internet-related material.

9 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Edge 9 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The W3C was founded in 1994 to develop common protocols for the evolution of the World Wide Web. This is an outstanding site with fascinating information on emerging Web technologies, protocols, and standards. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), These are the two main international professional societies that have technical conferences, magazines, and journals in the networking area. The ACM Special Interest Group in Data Communications (SIGCOMM), sigcomm, the IEEE Communications Society, and the IEEE Computer Society, are the groups within these bodies whose efforts are most closely related to networking. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet (that is, the Web site for this textbook!), You ll find a wealth of resources at the Web site, including hyperlinks to relevant Web pages, Java applets illustrating networking concepts, homework problems with answers, programming projects, streaming audio lectures coupled to slides, and much more. 1.2 The Network Edge In the previous sections we presented a high-level overview of the Internet and networking protocols. We are now going to delve a bit more deeply into the components of a computer network (and the Internet, in particular). We begin in this section at the edge of a network and look at the components with which we are most familiar namely, the computers that we use on a daily basis. In the next section we will move from the network edge to the network core and examine switching and routing in computer networks. Then in Section 1.4 we will discuss the actual physical links that carry the signals sent between computers and switches End Systems, Clients, and Servers In computer networking jargon, the computers connected to the Internet are often referred to as end systems. They are referred to as end systems because they sit at the edge of the Internet, as shown in Figure 1.3. The Internet s end systems include many different types of computers. End users directly interface with some of these computers, including desktop computers (desktop PCs, Macs, and UNIX-based workstations) and mobile computers (portable computers and PDAs with wireless Internet connections). The Internet s end systems also include computers with which users do not directly interface, such as Web servers and servers. Furthermore, an increasing number of alternative devices, such as thin clients and household

10 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet Regional ISP Local ISP Company Network Figure 1.3 End-system interaction appliances [Thinplanet 2002], Web TVs and set top boxes [Nesbitt 2002], and digital cameras are being attached to the Internet as end systems. For interesting discussions of the future of Internet appliances see [Manelli 2001; Appliance 2001; Dertouzos 2001; Odlyzko 1999]. End systems are also referred to as hosts because they host (that is, run) application programs such as a Web browser program, a Web server program, an reader program, or an server program. Throughout this book we will use the terms hosts and end systems interchangeably; that is, host = end system. Hosts are sometimes further divided into two categories: clients and servers. Informally, clients tend to be desktop and mobile PCs, PDAs, and so on, whereas servers tend to be more powerful machines hosting servers such as Web servers and mail servers.

11 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Edge 11 In the context of networking software, there is another definition of a client and server, a definition that we ll refer to throughout this book. A client program is a program running on one end system that requests and receives a service from a server program running on another end system. Studied in detail in Chapter 2, this client/server model is undoubtedly the most prevalent structure for Internet applications. The Web, , file transfer, remote login (for example, Telnet), newsgroups, and many other popular applications adopt the client/server model. Since a client program typically runs on one computer and the server program runs on another computer, client/server Internet applications are, by definition, distributed applications. The client program and the server program interact with each other by sending each other messages over the Internet. At this level of abstraction, the routers, links and other nuts and bolts of the Internet serve as a black box that transfers messages between the distributed, communicating components of an Internet application. This is the level of abstraction depicted in Figure 1.3. Not all Internet applications today consist of pure client programs interacting with pure server programs. For example, with the popular peerto-peer file sharing applications (Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA, and so on), the peer-to-peer application in the user s end system acts as both a client program and a server program. The program running in a peer (that is, a user s machine) acts as a client when it requests a file from another peer; and the program acts as a server when it sends a file to another peer. Case History SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE One of the niftiest applications of the Internet is the SETI@home project [SETI@home 2002], a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Anyone can participate by running a free client program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. The goal of the project is to find, in the radio telescope data, signals that were created by extraterrestrial life. SETI@home searches for signs of intelligent life by analyzing radio data that are collected from Arecibo, the largest radio telescope in the world, located in the hills of northern Puerto Rico. Massive quantities of radio data are collected on tapes and sent to Berkeley every week. At Berkeley, the data is divided into work units of about 300 Kbytes, which are stored in a central SETI@home server. To participate in this project, an Internet user (for example, you!) first downloads a client program from SETI@home that runs in the background on a host computer (for example, your PC). The client program then sets up a TCP connection to the central server, obtains a work unit, and closes the connection. Once a host has obtained a work unit, it processes the data mostly FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) calculations which may take from an hour to several days, depending on the power and usage of the host. When the calculations are finished, the client program reconnects to the central server, sends back the results, and gets a new work unit. Today, over 3 million users from more than 200 countries have downloaded and run the client program. In a typical day, the hosts together perform over 20 trillion floating-point operations per second, which is faster than the largest of the supercomputers. And the SETI@home project is only the tip of the iceberg for peerbased scientific computing. If 10 percent of the approximately one billion Internetconnected hosts participate in peer-based computing projects, there will be enough computing power for 100 projects the size of SETI@home [Anderson 2001].

12 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet Connectionless and Connection-Oriented Service End systems use the Internet to communicate with each other. Specifically, endsystem programs use the services of the Internet to send messages to each other. The links, routers, and other pieces of the Internet provide the means to transport these messages between the end-system programs. But what are the characteristics of the communication services that the Internet provides to its end systems? TCP/IP networks, and in particular the Internet, provide two types of services to end-system applications: connectionless service and connection-oriented service. A developer creating an Internet application (for example, an application, a file transfer application, a Web application, or an Internet phone application) must design the application to use one of these two services. We now briefly describe these two services. (We ll discuss these two services in much more detail in Chapter 3, which covers transport layer protocols.) Connection-Oriented Service When an application uses the connection-oriented service, the client program and the server program (residing in different end systems) send control packets to each other before sending packets with real data (such as messages). This socalled handshaking procedure alerts the client and server, allowing them to prepare for an onslaught of packets. Once the handshaking procedure is finished, a connection is said to be established between the two end systems. It is interesting to note that this initial handshaking procedure is similar to the protocol used in human interaction. The exchange of Hi s we saw in Figure 1.2 is an example of a human handshaking protocol (even though handshaking is not literally taking place between the two people). For the Web interaction also shown in Figure 1.2, the first two messages exchanged are also handshaking messages. The subsequent two messages the GET message and the response message containing the file include real data and are sent only after the connection has been established. Why the terminology connection-oriented service and not just connection service? This terminology is due to the fact that the end systems are connected in a very loose manner. In particular, only the end systems themselves are aware of this connection; the packet switches (that is, routers) within the Internet are completely oblivious to the connection. Indeed, a connection in the Internet consists of nothing more than allocated buffers and state variables in the end systems; the intervening packet switches do not maintain any connection-state information. The Internet s connection-oriented service comes bundled with several other services, including reliable data transfer, flow control, and congestion control. By reliable data transfer, we mean that an application can rely on the connection to deliver all of its data without error and in the proper order. Reliability in the Internet is achieved through the use of acknowledgments and retransmissions. To get a preliminary feel for how the Internet implements the reliable transport service, consider an application that has established a connection between end systems A and B.

13 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Edge 13 When end system B receives a packet from A, it sends an acknowledgment; when end system A receives the acknowledgment, it knows that the corresponding packet has definitely been received. When end system A doesn t receive an acknowledgment, it assumes the packet it sent wasn t received by B and thus retransmits the packet. Flow control makes sure that neither side of a connection overwhelms the other side by sending too many packets too fast. Indeed, there is a risk that the receiver may not be able to keep up with the rate at which the sender is sending packets. The flow-control service forces the sending end system to reduce its rate whenever there is such a risk. We ll see in Chapter 3 that the Internet implements the flow-control service by using sender and receiver buffers in the communicating end systems. The Internet s congestion-control service helps prevent the Internet from entering a state of gridlock. When a router becomes congested, its buffers can overflow and packet loss can occur. In such circumstances, if every pair of communicating end systems continues to pump packets into the network as fast as they can, gridlock sets in and few packets are delivered to their destinations. The Internet avoids this problem by forcing end systems to decrease the rate at which they send packets into the network during periods of congestion. End systems are alerted to the existence of severe congestion when they stop receiving acknowledgments for the packets they have sent. We emphasize here that although the Internet s connection-oriented service comes bundled with reliable data transfer, flow control, and congestion control, these three features are by no means essential components of a connection-oriented service. A different type of computer network may provide a connection-oriented service to its applications without bundling in one or more of these features. Indeed, any protocol that performs handshaking between the communicating entities before transferring data is a connection-oriented service [Iren 1999]. The Internet s connection-oriented service has a name TCP (Transmission Control Protocol); the initial version of the TCP protocol is defined in the Internet Request for Comments RFC 793 [RFC 793]. The services that TCP provides to an application include reliable transport, flow control, and congestion control. It is important to note that an application need only care about the services that are provided; it need not worry about how TCP actually implements reliability, flow control, or congestion control. We, of course, are very interested in how TCP implements these services, and we shall cover these topics in detail in Chapter 3. Connectionless Service There is no handshaking with the Internet s connectionless service. When one side of an application wants to send packets to the other side of the application, the sending program simply sends the packets. Since there is no handshaking procedure prior to data packet transmission, data can be delivered sooner. But there is no reliable data transfer either, so a source never knows for sure which packets have arrived at the destination. Moreover, the Internet s connectionless service makes no provision for flow control or congestion control. The Internet s connectionless

14 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet service is called UDP (User Datagram Protocol); UDP is defined in the Internet Request for Comments RFC 768. Most of the more familiar Internet applications use TCP, the Internet s connectionoriented service. These applications include Telnet (for remote login), SMTP (for electronic mail), FTP (for file transfer), and HTTP (for the Web). Nevertheless, UDP, the Internet s connectionless service, is used by many applications, including many of the emerging multimedia applications, such as Internet phone and video conferencing. 1.3 The Network Core Having examined the end systems and end-end transport service model of the Internet, let us now delve more deeply into the inside of the network. In this section we study the network core the mesh of routers that interconnect the Internet s end systems. Figure 1.4 highlights the network core with thick, shaded lines Circuit Switching and Packet Switching There are two fundamental approaches toward building a network core: circuit switching and packet switching. In circuit-switched networks, the resources needed along a path (buffers, link bandwidth) to provide for communication between the end systems are reserved for the duration of the communication session. In packet-switched networks, these resources are not reserved; a session s messages use the resources on demand, and as a consequence, may have to wait (that is, queue) for access to a communication link. As a simple analogy, consider two restaurants one that requires reservations and another that neither requires reservations nor accepts them. For the restaurant that requires reservations, we have to go through the hassle of first calling before we leave home. But when we arrive at the restaurant we can, in principle, immediately communicate with the waiter and order our meal. For the restaurant that does not require reservations, we don t need to bother to reserve a table. But when we arrive at the restaurant, we may have to wait for a table before we can communicate with the waiter. The ubiquitous telephone networks are examples of circuit-switched networks. Consider what happens when one person wants to send information (voice or facsimile) to another over a telephone network. Before the sender can send the information, the network must first establish a connection between the sender and the receiver. In contrast with the TCP connection that we discussed in the previous section, this is a bona fide connection for which the switches on the path between the sender and receiver maintain connection state for that connection. In the jargon of telephony, this connection is called a circuit. When the network establishes the circuit, it also reserves a constant transmission rate in the network s links for the duration of the connection. Since bandwidth has been reserved for this sender-to-receiver connection, the sender can transfer the data to the receiver at the guaranteed constant rate.

15 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Core 15 Regional ISP Local ISP Company Network Figure 1.4 The network core Today s Internet is a quintessential packet-switched network. Consider what happens when one host wants to send a packet to another host over the Internet. As with circuit switching, the packet is transmitted over a series of communication links. But with packet switching, the packet is sent into the network without reserving any bandwidth whatsoever. If one of the links is congested because other packets need to be transmitted over the link at the same time, then our packet will have to wait in a buffer at the sending side of the transmission link, and suffer a delay. The Internet makes its best effort to deliver packets in a timely manner, but it does not make any guarantees. Not all telecommunication networks can be neatly classified as pure circuitswitched networks or pure packet-switched networks. For example, for networks based on the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology (a topic we consider

16 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet in Chapter 5), a connection can make a reservation and yet its messages may still wait for congested resources! Nevertheless, this fundamental classification into packet- and circuit-switched networks is an excellent starting point in understanding telecommunication network technology. Circuit Switching This book is about computer networks, the Internet, and packet switching, not about telephone networks and circuit switching. Nevertheless, it is important to understand why the Internet and other computer networks use packet switching rather than the more traditional circuit-switching technology used in the telephone networks. For this reason, we now give a brief overview of circuit switching. Figure 1.5 illustrates a circuit-switched network. In this network, the four circuit switches are interconnected by four links. Each of these links has n circuits, so that each link can support n simultaneous connections. The hosts (for example, PCs Host A Each link consists of n circuits (TDM or FDM) End-to-end connection between Hosts A and B, using one circuit in each of the links Host B Key: Host Circuit switch Figure 1.5 A simple circuit-switched network consisting of four switches and four links

17 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Core 17 and workstations) are each directly connected to one of the switches. When two hosts want to communicate, the network establishes a dedicated end-to-end connection between two hosts. (Conference calls between more than two devices are, of course, also possible. But to keep things simple, let s suppose for now that there are only two hosts for each connection.) Thus, in order for host A to send messages to host B, the network must first reserve one circuit on each of two links. Because each link has n circuits, for each link used by the end-to-end connection, the connection gets the fraction 1/n of the link s bandwidth for the duration of the connection. Multiplexing in Circuit-Switched Networks A circuit in a link is implemented with either frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) or time-division multiplexing (TDM). With FDM, the frequency spectrum of a link is shared among the connections established across the link. Specifically, the link dedicates a frequency band to each connection for the duration of the connection. In telephone networks, this frequency band typically has a width of 4 khz (that is, 4,000 Hertz or 4,000 cycles per second). The width of the band is called, not surprisingly, the bandwidth. FM radio stations also use FDM to share the microwave frequency spectrum. The trend in modern telephony is to replace FDM with TDM. Most links in most telephone systems in developed countries currently employ TDM. For a TDM link, time is divided into frames of fixed duration, and each frame is divided into a fixed number of time slots. When the network establishes a connection across a link, the network dedicates one time slot in every frame to the connection. These slots are dedicated for the sole use of that connection, with a time slot available for use (in every frame) to transmit the connection s data. Figure 1.6 illustrates FDM and TDM for a specific network link supporting up to four circuits. For FDM, the frequency domain is segmented into four bands, each of bandwidth 4 khz. For TDM, the time domain is segmented into frames, with four time slots in each frame; each circuit is assigned the same dedicated slot in the revolving TDM frames. For TDM, the transmission rate of a circuit is equal to the frame rate multiplied by the number of bits in a slot. For example, if the link transmits 8,000 frames per second and each slot consists of eight bits, then the transmission rate of a circuit is 64 Kbps. Proponents of packet switching have always argued that circuit switching is wasteful because the dedicated circuits are idle during silent periods. For example, when one person in a telephone call stops talking, the idle network resources (frequency bands or slots in the links along the connection s route) cannot be used by other ongoing connections. As another example of how these resources can be underutilized, consider a radiologist who uses a circuit-switched network to remotely access a series of x-rays. The radiologist sets up a connection, requests an image, contemplates the image, and then requests a new image. Network resources are wasted during the radiologist s contemplation periods. Proponents of packet switching also enjoy

18 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet 4KHz FDM Link Frequency 4KHz TDM Key: Slot Frame Time 2 All slots labeled 2 are dedicated to a specific sender-receiver pair. Figure 1.6 With FDM, each circuit continuously gets a fraction of the bandwidth. With TDM, each circuit gets all of the bandwidth periodically during brief intervals of time (that is, during slots). pointing out that establishing end-to-end circuits and reserving end-to-end bandwidth is complicated and requires complex signaling software to coordinate the operation of the switches along the end-to-end path. Before we finish our discussion of circuit switching, let s work through a numerical example that should shed further insight on the topic. Let us consider how long it takes to send a file of 640,000 bits from host A to host B over a circuit-switched network. Suppose that all links in the network use TDM with 24 slots and have a bit rate of Mbps. Also suppose that it takes 500 msec to establish an end-to-end circuit before host A can begin to transmit the file. How long does it take to send the file? Each circuit has a transmission rate of (1.536 Mbps)/24 = 64 Kbps, so it takes (640,000 bits)/(64 Kbps) = 10 seconds to transmit the file. To this 10 seconds we add the circuit establishment time, giving 10.5 seconds to send the file. Note that the transmission time is independent of the number of links: The transmission time would be 10 seconds if the end-to-end circuit passed through one link or 100 links. (The actual end-to-end delay also includes a propagation delay; see Section 1.6.) Packet Switching We saw in Section 1.1 that applications exchange messages in accomplishing their task. Messages can contain anything the protocol designer wants. Messages may

19 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Core 19 perform a control function (for example, the Hi messages in our handshaking example) or can contain data, such as an message, a JPEG image, or an MP3 audio file. In modern computer networks, the source breaks long messages into smaller chunks of data known as packets. Between source and destination, each of these packets travels through communication links and packet switches (also known as routers). Packets are transmitted over each communication link at a rate equal to the full transmission rate of the link. Most packet switches use store-andforward transmission at the inputs to the links. Store-and-forward transmission means that the switch must receive the entire packet before it can begin to transmit the first bit of the packet onto the outbound link. Thus store-and-forward packet switches introduce a store-and-forward delay at the input to each link along the packet s route. This delay is proportional to the packet s length in bits. In particular, if a packet consists of L bits, and the packet is to be forwarded onto an outbound link of R bps, then the store-and-forward delay at the switch is L/R seconds. Each router has multiple links attached to it. For each attached link, the router has an output buffer (also called an output queue), which stores packets that the router is about to send into that link. The output buffers play a key role in packet switching. If an arriving packet needs to be transmitted across a link but finds the link busy with the transmission of another packet, the arriving packet must wait in the output buffer. Thus, in addition to the store-and-forward delays, packets suffer output buffer queuing delays. These delays are variable and depend on the level of congestion in the network. Since the amount of buffer space is finite, an arriving packet may find that the buffer is completely filled with other packets waiting for transmission. In this case, packet loss will occur either the arriving packet or one of the already-queued packets will be dropped. Returning to our restaurant analogy from earlier in this section, the queuing delay is analogous to the amount of time you spend waiting at the restaurant s bar for a table to become free. Packet loss is analogous to being told by the waiter that you must leave the premises because there are already too many other people waiting at the bar for a table. Figure 1.7 illustrates a simple packet-switched network. In this and subsequent figures, packets are represented by three-dimensional slabs. The width of a slab represents the packet s length. In this figure, all packets have the same width and hence the same length. Suppose hosts A and B are sending packets to host E. Hosts A and B first send their packets along 10 Mbps Ethernet links to the first packet switch. The packet switch directs these packets to the 1.5 Mbps link. If there is congestion at this link, the packets will queue in the link s output buffer before being transmitted onto the link. Consider now how host A and host B packets are transmitted onto this link. As shown in Figure 1.7, the sequence of A and B packets does not follow any fixed pattern; instead the ordering is random because packets are sent whenever they happen to be present at the link. Because of this random ordering, we often say that packet switching employs statistical multiplexing. Statistical multiplexing sharply contrasts with time-division multiplexing (TDM) in circuit switching, for which each host gets the same slot in a revolving TDM frame.

20 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page CHAPTER 1 Computer Networks and the Internet A 10 Mbps Ethernet Statistical multiplexing C 1.5 Mbps Queue of packets waiting for output link B Key: D E Packets Figure 1.7 Packet switching Let s now consider how long it takes to send a packet of L bits from one host to another host across a packet-switched network. Let s suppose that there are Q links between the two hosts, each of rate R bps. Assume that queuing delays and end-toend propagation delays are negligible and that there is no connection establishment. The packet must first be transmitted onto the first link emanating from host A; this takes L/R seconds. It must then be transmitted on each of the Q 1 remaining links; that is, it must be stored and forwarded Q 1 times. Thus the total delay is QL/R. Packet Switching Versus Circuit Switching Having described circuit switching and packet switching, let us compare the two. Opponents of packet switching have often argued that packet switching is not suitable for real-time services (for example, telephone calls and video conference calls) because of its variable and unpredictable end-to-end delays (due primarily to variable and unpredictable queuing delays). Proponents of packet switching argue that (1) it offers better sharing of bandwidth than circuit switching and (2) it is simpler, more efficient, and less costly to implement than circuit switching. Generally speaking, people who do not like to hassle with restaurant reservations prefer packet switching to circuit switching. Why is packet switching more efficient? Let us look at a simple example. Suppose users share a 1 Mbps link. Also suppose that each user alternates between periods of activity, when the user generates data at a constant rate of 100 Kbps, and periods of inactivity (when the user generates no data). Suppose further that the user is active only 10 percent of the time (and is idle drinking coffee during the remain-

21 C01 pp4 6/14/02 5:45 PM Page The Network Core 21 ing 90 percent of the time). With circuit switching, 100 Kbps must be reserved for each user at all times. Thus, the link can support only 10 ( = 1Mbps/100 Kbps) simultaneous users. With packet switching, the probability that a specific user is active is 0.1 (that is, 10 percent). If there are 35 users, the probability that there are 11 or more simultaneously active users is approximately (Problem 10 outlines how this probability is obtained.) When there are 10 or fewer simultaneously active users (which happens with probability ), the aggregate arrival rate of data is less than or equal to 1 Mbps, the output rate of the link. Thus, when there are 10 or fewer active users, users packets flow through the link essentially without delay, as is the case with circuit switching. When there are more than 10 simultaneously active users, then the aggregate arrival rate of packets exceeds the output capacity of the link, and the output queue will begin to grow. (It continues to grow until the aggregate input rate falls back below 1 Mbps, at which point the queue will begin to diminish in length.) Because the probability of having more than 10 simultaneously active users is minuscule in this example, packet switching almost always has the same delay performance as circuit switching, but does so while allowing for more than three times the number of users. Although packet switching and circuit switching are both prevalent in today s telecommunication networks, the trend is certainly in the direction of packet switching. Even many of today s circuit-switched telephone networks are slowly migrating toward packet switching. In particular, telephone networks often use packet switching for the expensive overseas portion of a telephone call. Message Segmenting In a modern packet-switched network, the source host segments long, applicationlayer messages into smaller packets and sends the smaller packets into the network; the receiver later reassembles the packets back into the original messages. But why bother to segment the messages into packets in the first place, only to have to reassemble packets into messages? Doesn t this place an additional and unnecessary burden on the source and destination? Although segmentation and reassembly do complicate the design of the source and receiver, researchers and network designers concluded in the early days of packet switching that the advantages of segmentation greatly compensate for its complexity. Before discussing some of these advantages, we need to introduce some terminology. We say that a packet-switched network performs message switching if the sources do not segment messages (that is, they send a message into the network as a whole). Thus message switching is a specific kind of packet switching, in which the packets traversing the network are themselves entire application messages. Figure 1.8 illustrates message switching in a route consisting of two packet switches and three links. With message switching, the message stays intact as it traverses the network. Because the switches are store-and-forward packet switches, a packet switch must receive the entire message before it can begin to forward the